in Timor-Leste, Indonesia & Melanesia

Category: Indonesia

By Edmund McWilliams (retired US foreign service officer) Originally published in Flowers in the Wall (download free pdf) There are few places in the world where U.S. human rights policy is as disingenuous as it is in West Papua. The bankruptcy of U.S. posturing regarding respect for fundamental human rights, including protection of the physical security of… More Time for a New U.S. Approach toward Indonesia and West Papua

By David Webster West Papua, occupied by Indonesia since the 1960s, is making headlines with a wave of protests sparked by anti-Papuan racism. How did this territory come under Indonesian rule? This article from Cornell University’s journal Indonesia (now in open access) provides context on how the Papuan right to self-determination was abandoned in the… More Self-Determination Abandoned: The Road to the New York Agreement on West Papua

The right to food; the right to health. Images of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it gets ready to turn 70. Centro Nacional Chega, the Timor-Leste centre for truth & reconciliation, Dili, Timor-Leste. pic.twitter.com/sYhjUeKHBE — David Webster (@dwebsterbu) October 30, 2018 Instead of mega-monuments glorifying the past, a photo exhibit explains a complex… More Memorializing Dili, Timor-Leste

The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66 By Geoffrey Robinson The Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century—the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965–66, leaving some five hundred thousand people dead and more than a… More New Book: The Killing Season A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66

30 September and 1 October mark the anniversary of the Indonesian military’s seizure of power in Indonesia in 1965, which began an organized wave of killings by the Indonesian military and their supporters. To mark the anniversary of the killings and the ongoing campaign to tell the true story of what happened in 1965-66, we… More Cracks in the Wall: Indonesia and Narratives of the 1965 Mass Violence

By Lia Kent and Rizki Affiat During a recent Sunday drive near Bener Mariah, in Central Aceh, to visit the district’s famous lake, we pass thick mountainous forests where it is said that tigers and elephants still roam. Our friend, a local peace advocate, gestures out of the car window to the sites of several… More Peace, truth & reconciliation in Aceh